Q&A
Best practices for student voter registration from other states
1:01:36
·
136 sec
Council Member Erik Bottcher inquires about successful voter registration initiatives in other states that could be replicated in New York. NYPIRG and CUNY representatives discuss various approaches and reforms that have shown positive results.
- States with high youth turnout have implemented same-day registration and automatic registration
- New York has made some progress by reducing registration deadlines and introducing an online voter portal
- Face-to-face registration, especially student-to-student, is highlighted as particularly effective
- The 'All In' campaign, a national competition, has generated unique ideas for increasing civic engagement on campuses
Erik Bottcher
1:01:36
Are there other states or municipalities that are doing exciting things that we've been looking at that we could replicate here?
1:01:49
I imagine that there's some states, especially this year, where there's really big effort to register students to vote AND IT BE INTERESTING TO KNOW WHAT NEW THINGS ARE BEING DONE THERE THAT WE COULD POTENTIALLY LOOK AT.
Megan Ahearn
1:02:11
THIS ISN'T UNFORTUNATELY FOR THIS ELECTION BECAUSE IT WOULD REQUIRE STATE.
1:02:16
State law to be passed, but states with the highest youth turnout have reforms like same day registration and automatic registration.
1:02:26
New York has has done some good work in in expanding voter registration laws in the last few years after many years of stagnant laws by reducing the deadline to 10 days, having an online voter portal, But again, to underline something Helen said before, it's really the face to face registration that gets forms actually filled out, especially when it's a student talking to another student and saying, here's why I registered and why I think you should do.
1:02:57
But those reforms, New York still hasn't done and would greatly improve voter turnout among students who may show up to to the pool site and and unfortunately not registered unless it's the 1st day of early voting, and then they can still register and vote on the same day.
Erik Bottcher
1:03:15
I think we do have a lot of work to do here in New York.
1:03:19
And same day registration, things like that.
1:03:23
It'd be exciting to partner together with you as we pursue those.
Denise Maybank
1:03:30
The other thing I was gonna add is that the all in campaign because it was a competition, When it began, it generated a lot of unique kinds of ideas that were that may have been local, but they certainly have opportunity for being generalized to other places.
1:03:46
And so that might be a place we can look as well because they have a a good cadplay of things.